Monday, December 17, 2007

They Also Edit Comments on Uncommon Descent - Then You're Banned!

One of the more despicable practices of bloggers is to edit the words of people who comment on their blog. I already took notice of this practice on "Dr." Sharon's Blog.

Now the same thing is happening on Uncommon Descent. I posted a message there saying "Some of the more intelligent IDiots (I realize that's an oxymoron) ..."

When the comment finally appeared it said, "Some of the more intelligent ID proponents ..."

Would it surprise you to learn that this comment from "gpuccio" didn't get edited?

Larry Moran has clearly shown the intellectual and moral level od darwinist arguments: failure to answer any pertinent question, and readyness to grossly insult any adversary, are really their only weapons. While their moral failures can always be pardoned (after all, man is not a perfect being), their intellectual stupidity and arrogance are much more difficult to excuse.

No? I didn't think you be surprised. Why is it that creationists are so willing to dish it out but so cowardly when they're on the receiving end?

Anyway, they won't have to worry about it from now on since Patrick has just posted the following message.

Since you guys apparently want to debate Larry Moran in this thread–are you guys masochists? ;) –I temporarily let his comments through but edited them for insults and such (the ones that were not entirely insults). Otherwise, Larry is banned as usual.

This will surely be followed by dozens of comments attacking me and what I said in the edited comments that were allowed to appear. I won't be able to respond to them no matter how IDiotic they are. Isn't that strange?

13 comments
:

Not strange. After all, if idiots were corrigible they wouldn't stay idiots. Anyway, who cares about ID? The attention it gets from blogs such as this one is all it has going for it. You're worried ID might win some kind of political victory but even if it does, and I think the opportunity for that has passed, it will be temporary, because America is principally about money not God, and money craves results not word magic.

They're a rag-tag bunch of philosophers, mathemticians, computer programmers, engineers, lawyers, journalists and some hangers-on, all convinced that they understand biology better than the vast majority of professional biologists.

The only way they can maintain that pretense is to sit in their little bunker on Uncommon Descent chattering amongst themselves and relying on thugerators like DaveScot to screen out anything that might threaten their delusions.

Larry, Larry... Why do you continually waste your time and energy on that intellectual dung heap? I hope none of it rubs off. As Nietzsche once said, if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Even that would be somewhat respectable, but as per Hitchens, religion poisons everything. So they're just a bunch of bible-thumping IDiots. Any useful skills they may have accumulated in their lives have been distorted to the point of uselessness by religious foolishness.

Larry, Larry... Why do you continually waste your time and energy on that intellectual dung heap?

There are two reasons.

1. Some of the people over there are genuinely ignorant about biology and their opinion might change if they only saw the other side being defended.

2. This is a serious social issue (especially in the USA). Ignoring it isn't going to make it go away. We need to keep hammering on the idea that the IDiots are, well, IDiots. Leaving them in possession of the battlefield isn't a good idea.

Larry, surprising you didn't know how stupid IDiots like Bill Dembski and his clutch of clowns can get. The guy is actually a squealing insecure lightweight and chooses to bolt every time there is trouble. Even now you can see neither Billy nor his clowns is going to make an appearance here.

Larry said:1. Some of the people over there are genuinely ignorant about biology and their opinion might change if they only saw the other side being defended.

Well, is this why darwinists won't allow a diferent viewpoint being defend in public schools? Is it because they know, once people evaluate ID and darwinism failry, Uncle Charlie is kicked out of the tree?

Larry adds:2. This is a serious social issue (especially in the USA). Ignoring it isn't going to make it go away. We need to keep hammering on the idea that the IDiots are, well, IDiots. Leaving them in possession of the battlefield isn't a good idea. The problem, of course, si that the legal battlefield is totally dominated by darwinian totalists. I don't think that a few blogs attacking uncle charlie will harm such a robust theory like the darwinian one. Would it? *s*

Well, is this why darwinists won't allow a diferent viewpoint being defend in public schools? Is it because they know, once people evaluate ID and darwinism failry, Uncle Charlie is kicked out of the tree?

Not at all. I'm all in favor of presenting crazy ideas like Intelligent Design Creationism in school and letting students judge for themselves whether it merits any consideration.

Both of my children were exposed to creationism in their biology class and it was very educational for them. They were amazed to discover that there are some people out there who reject the main discoveries of science in favor of superstition.

I think every student should learn about the "evidence" for a worldwide deluge in 2500 BC and how the Earth and all its creatures were created all of a sudden in 6000 BC.

Once they've learned to dismiss the most outlandish claims of the Young Earth Creationists they will be well placed to recognize the flaws in Intelligent Design Creationism.

The problem, of course, si that the legal battlefield is totally dominated by darwinian totalists. I don't think that a few blogs attacking uncle charlie will harm such a robust theory like the darwinian one. Would it?

No, they have no significant effect in my country. I think the creationist blogs are amusing and pitiful at the same time.

By the way, is it the fear of truth that gives rise to censorship on the creationist blogs? They seem to be so afraid of hearing the other side that they censor the comments of scientists then ban people who raise too many troubling questions.

By the way, is it the fear of truth that gives rise to censorship on the creationist blogs?

These guys wouldn't know truth if it bit them in the wazoo. Look at the IDiots on DI and UcD remaining absolutely silent on the laugh-a-minute and guffaw-a-while absurdity of a museum in N. Kentucky. Billy, Mike, Philly, Rob, Casey, and the imbecilically smug Bruce Chapman, won't be caught ever making fun of Ken Ham's clown act, even if they know it is total IDiocy. Even Mike Gene the dissembling TelicThinker is all quiet. These guys know that Classic Creationism is the real game in town and these cheap tux Creos (try Classic Coke and New Coke) are outsiders. That's why you will find Mike Behe contradicting himself at every turn, scared to offend the Classic Creos. So he accepts common descent when it suits him and is all fire and brimstone before the big creo audiences. Paul Nelson and Steve Meyer both ignoramuses in general and particular don't even mask try to mask their Creationism.

Laurence A. Moran

Larry Moran is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website.

Sandwalk

The Sandwalk is the path behind the home of Charles Darwin where he used to walk every day, thinking about science. You can see the path in the woods in the upper left-hand corner of this image.

Disclaimer

Some readers of this blog may be under the impression that my personal opinions represent the official position of Canada, the Province of Ontario, the City of Toronto, the University of Toronto, the Faculty of Medicine, or the Department of Biochemistry. All of these institutions, plus every single one of my colleagues, students, friends, and relatives, want you to know that I do not speak for them. You should also know that they don't speak for me.

Subscribe to Sandwalk

Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.